When gamers think “Tekken”, the words “Awesome,” “pwnage,” or “kickass” shortly follow, much like the three previous titles in the series. Only three years after the PS2 launch title; Tekken Tag Tournament, comes a very anticipated sequel to one of the more entertaining fighting games in gaming history; Tekken 3. Even though it still doesn't do much for a sequel, (considering that Tekken Tag came along after Tekken 3,) it still does a great as a stand-alone title.
STORY:
Tekken 4's story teeters between being cool and aaight. It's not so radically different from Tekken 3, much like the game itself, which is a good thing. After all, ‘If it aint broke, don't fix it.'
GAMEPLAY:
The game play is a lot like the story line: not much different. It has slightly improved striking, slightly improved styles, and slightly improved all-around engine, but for the most part, everything's the same. It's like the same game as Tekken 3, just with completely re-developed characters and worlds, which is reason enough to make this game as awesome as a re-make of Tekken 3 can get. After all, it's not like we're going from Soul Blade to Soul Calibur. This is still a Tekken fighting game.Much like the Virtua Fighter series, one of the strengths of the Tekken series (regardless of it's story line) is its attention to realistic fighting styles. All characters are well balanced in their respective fighting styles, so there's never such a thing as picking a “sucky” or “lame” fighter, because they all kick ass.
The one thing I like about it the most is the balance the game play provides. It's simple enough to get used to, yet complicate enough to separate the button mashers from the 1337 sk1llz0rz.
Tekken 4 also proudly boasts the adoption of the FORCE MODE, which is perhaps the most simply entertaining thing in fighting game history. It's an awesome improvement to the first force mode in Tekken 3. Also, if you want to learn the strengths and weaknesses of your character, this sure beats the hell out of practice mode.
One of the irritating things about this game starts with the menus. Go in one, and there is absolutely no way out of it. Going into the wrong menu, means either you have to go all the way through it until it reaches the pause screen so you can exit, or by simply restarting your PS2. To think that the developers put so much time into making this game awesome, yet fail at something as simple as MENU FUNCTIONALITY!
Another mentionable irritant in this game is that it's slower than it used to be. (Which was already slow enough for goodness sake!) Striking and combos are slower and less responsive than they are in force mode. Which leaves the balance of this game in question. Not to mention that creating combos and special moves are allot harder and less responsive than Tekken 3 was on the PS1. Also, the Physics are a lot less ORGANIC than Tekken 3, which is perhaps the biggest mistake they could have made.
SOUND:
The music is HORRIBLE, considering that Tekken 3 actually boasted a DECENT soundtrack. This crap is annoying, and isn't acceptable by ANY standards. If you like the music in Tekken 4, you should seek an immediate psychiatric evaluation.VERDICT:
Regardless of the glitches, Tekken 4 makes up for it all with solid game play, and the simple fact that they didn't entirely screw it up. Although it's not the biggest improvement in the world, the developers did a pretty good job making sure the series didn't go to hell in a hand basket, which is a lot more than I could say for a lot of other games of a series.
The Good: It's a TEKKEN game, It has interesting endings...
The Bad: They slowed down the combat, making it a little harder to perform some specific moves, the voice acting in the cut scenes is bad,They still havent made a way to escape a menu screen, the music sucks harder than the gravitational pull of the sun...
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